The Fifth Sacred Thing (85 page)

What scared him most was Rio’s suggestion that victory might be possible. The supply lines were down, soldiers were deserting every day—not many, but others were thinking about it. Maybe Lily’s strategy was starting to work. If that were true, his resistance or compliance might still make a difference. The situation called for qualities he no longer possessed: courage, stamina, obstinacy.
Diosa
, he had no more left. How could he hold out against them when he knew that they could always hold out longer? It cost them nothing to inflict pain; it cost him everything to resist. And if they worked on Rosa? How long could he bear that?

But, Goddess help him, he would have to try again. Even if he were already on the road that would lead him to do abominations in the end, there was some honor left in prolonging the journey. Maybe even some dangerous, seductive hope.

But when they brought him to the General, it was not for questioning but for punishment.

“You’ve been lying to us,” the General told him. “You’ve been holding out on us. That’s not a wise thing to do, boy. You’re not our only informant, you know. We have many ways of gathering information.”

Bird said nothing. The guards that flanked the General were not from his own unit but from the Private Guard, and their white faces turned red and shiny under the hot lights they shone in Bird’s eyes.

“Why didn’t you tell us about the cisterns?” the General asked. “All that time you sat out in the Plaza, laughing at us, knowing damn well that nobody would sign on for rations as long as they had a full store of water sitting in the basement. Why did we have to discover this ourselves during a search?”

“You didn’t ask,” Bird said.

Then his punishment began.

33

“L
ou!”

“Hey, Madrone!” They hugged fiercely, and Aviva, coming into the kitchen, threw her arms around them both.

“Madrone! Goddess, it’s good to see you alive!”

“I never realized how much I’d miss you, till you were gone,” Lou admitted.

“Me neither,” Madrone said. “I wished for you both a thousand times down south, if only to have someone to bitch to.”

“Well, it’s just like old times around here,” Aviva said. “Chaos, death, inadequate staff, business as usual. And you look exhausted, also as usual.”

“Because I got my usual three hours of sleep,” Madrone said. “We got back last night and Sam put me straight to work.”

“War is hell,” Lou said cheerfully.

All morning Madrone moved in and out of trance, in and out of the bee mind that let her taste the chemistry at work in the feverish bodies she encountered. Around midday she looked up to see Sara observing her.

“Mary Ellen sent me to tell you lunch is ready and to make you come and eat it whether you want to or not.”

“Make me, huh? Just how are you going to do that?”

“Force of personality. Come on.”

Mary Ellen looked at home behind the stove, as if she had always lived at Black Dragon House, helping Maya dish up stew for platoons of sick soldiers. Sara, dressed in a simple shirt and jeans, her blond hair pulled plainly back from her face and braided, nevertheless looked out of place awkwardly balancing trays of food and returning with dirty dishes.

Lou, Aviva, and Madrone were settled around the big table, at work on their second round of stew when Sam came in.

“How goes it?” he asked. “Get any sleep, Madrone?”

“Not enough. So just to prove to you what a reformed character I am, after I eat I am going to take a nap.”

“A nap!” Lou raised his eyebrows. “Don’t you know there’s a war on?”

“When can we get a readout on those data slugs?” Madrone asked Sam.

“I don’t know. Flore is having to work completely undercover, and she had a hell of a time convincing the crystals on her palmtop to work, even for her. But she’s running up the stats, and we’re checking through the printouts. To put it very simply, it seems the boosters work not by upping the T-cell count but by subtly shifting the cytokine balance, so they produce more antibodies. Sudden withdrawal causes the T-cells to go on strike for a period that might last anywhere from a few days to a few weeks. After that, they seem to kick back in slowly if the patient hasn’t already contracted something deadly.”

“What does that mean in English?” Maya asked from the sink, where she was washing a stack of dishes in a frugal potful of water.

“If your immune system were an army,” Sam explained, “it would be like feeding each of the soldiers a high that could keep him going day and night, without sleep. He’d be a much more efficient killer. But take the drug away, and he’d collapse. Maybe he’d die; maybe he’d just need a month or two of rest to recover.”

“That’s about what we figured empirically,” Madrone said. “Down south, we kept them in isolation as much as possible and used herbs and pressure points to stimulate the immune system.”

“Successfully?” Aviva asked.

“Not entirely. About sixty or seventy percent survived.”

“That’s a good rate, medically, but not quite a recruiting point,” Lou said. “We can’t bring in deserters with those odds.”

“We can do better. We have resources here I didn’t have down there.”

“Then you must have been pretty bad off.”

“In the hills, Lou, I didn’t even have water to wash the shit off my patients’ asses. And that’s the literal truth.”

There was silence around the table. Madrone broke it.

“Speaking of resources, Sam, do we have any available stocks of AL-431?”

“Yeah, I’ve got some down in the garage. Why?”

“Mary Ellen’s granddaughter—who’s Sara’s niece—it’s a long story. She’s next door with the Sisters.”

“I’ll bring some up.”

“Good. I’ll stop by there this afternoon, after I have a little sleep.”

Madrone had just closed her eyes when someone came in and perched on the end of her bed.

“Madrone? Are you asleep yet?”

She groaned, opening her eyes. “Not anymore.” Sara was looking at her, her smile slight and hesitant.

“I just wanted to talk for a minute. I won’t bother you long, I know you’re tired.”

“Sure,” Madrone said, propping herself up on Maya’s big pillows. “What is it?”

“I wanted to thank you—thank you for bringing me here.”

“Uh, sure. Thank you for helping me rescue Katy. Sara, what is it you really want to talk about?”

“Us.” Sara moved closer and took Madrone’s hand. “Is there still an us to talk about?”

“Aren’t you and Isis …?”

“That’s very powerful,” Sara admitted. “But I thought you people weren’t jealous.”

“I’m not. But I’ll bet Isis is. Look, Sara, I’m happy for you if you’re happy. I’m frankly too exhausted right now to even think about sex or love.”

“I didn’t want you to feel—”

“Seduced and abandoned?” Madrone grinned.

“Something like that.”

“Don’t worry, Sara. Like I said, right now I barely have energy to keep on top of the work here without collapsing. If this war is ever over, who knows?”

“Can I help you in some way? Can I do anything for you?”

“You have been helping, you and Mary Ellen. Taking over the cooking and feeding and general nursing. It’s far too much for Maya, but she’d never admit it. How is it for you, to be doing all this work? I know it’s not what you’re used to.”

“I kind of like it,” Sara admitted. “I’ve never been useful before.”

“If the war ends—no,
when
the war ends, if you stay here, you can do any kind of work you want, you know. You could train for something, anything that interests you. Have you thought about that?”

“No,” Sara admitted. “I never have.”

“Well, think about it,” Madrone said. “And now, I’m sorry, but I’ve really got to get some rest.”

“I’ll leave you,” Sara said, bending over and kissing her lightly on the cheek. The imprint of her lips felt warm long after she had tiptoed out, closing the door behind her.

Katy was sitting in the sun in the back garden at the Sisters’ house. The beds were ragged and weedy but still filled with flowers, pink and purple cosmos and red geraniums and scented herbs. With her dark hair hanging long and
loose on her shoulders and her baby cradled in her arms, Katy mirrored the statue of Virgin and Child that nestled under the plum tree.

“How are you, Katy?” Madrone sat down on the dry grass next to her. “I like your hair down. I like it up, too, for that matter. Somewhere in my room I’ve got a pair of tortoiseshell combs I want to give you. My hair’s too bushy for them, but they’ll make you look like a true Spanish noblewoman from some other century.”

Katy smiled. “I’m fine.”

“I just checked Angela, started her on a new drug regimen. The pills and instructions are inside.”

“Thanks so much, Madrone.” Katy turned, shifting the sleeping baby. Her movement was unconsciously graceful, as if the child were still a part of her, and Madrone nodded approvingly. A sign of good bonding, that ease. Babies held like that would thrive.

“I’m so happy to be able to do something for her, finally. Something as simple as prescribing a few pills, which we didn’t even have to raid a pharmacy for. Not yet, anyway, as long as our stores hold out.”

Katy sighed. “It’s so peaceful here in the sun. I can’t think about raids or believe the war is really happening. I’ve never seen such a beautiful garden.”

“You should see it in the spring, the way it was before the invasion, with all the fruit trees in bloom and plenty of water,” Madrone said. “But you’re really okay, everything right with the baby?”

“Fine, really fine.”

“Any problems? Questions?”

“Madrone, I’m not unfamiliar with babies. I’ve tended dozens of them.”

“I know. But your own can be different. And you had such an ordeal, those last days.”

“You don’t have to worry about me now. How about you, Madrone—are you okay?”

“I’m tired. I’m worried.”

“Your family?”

“One of them’s a prisoner.”

“I’m sorry.”

“They say Bird, my
compa
—my partner, I guess you’d say—they say he’s gone over to the enemy. Wears their uniform and works for them. Some people think he’s a traitor.”

“Do you believe it?”

“I don’t know.”

“Your people here don’t know much about coercion. Have a little tolerance.”

“I do.”

The baby stirred and cried, and Katy offered her breast, looking down at her lovingly while she sucked. “I’m beginning to enjoy her.”

“Named her yet?”

“You should name her. Madrone, I’m sorry about that stupid fight we had. I know you didn’t mean to hurt me. And I know that if it wasn’t for you—”

“Don’t even think about it, Katy, you’ll curdle your milk. Do you miss Hijohn?”

“I do. I wish he could see his daughter.”

“Someday he will.”

“I wish he knew we were both still alive.”

“Beth’ll get word to him, somehow, that you escaped.”

“The Southlands seem so far away, like another world. As if we really had died and gone to heaven.”

“This is not heaven.”

“It seems that way to me, if I close my eyes and don’t think about what’s happening.”

“Anywhere can be heaven if you do that.”